The year 2064
by SomeoneOnThisWorld
Summary: Sherlolly relationship, as it was seen through Sherlock's eyes in a distant future. ONESHOT


It started with rude deductions, first sincere apology in forever and a kiss on the cheek.

No, wait – that was when _he_ first started to notice her. It really started with a list of deductions and a stuttering attempt to start a conversation. To anyone that didn't know her, she was a mess, a tool that could easily be used in any way he wanted. But he saw what was underneath – mainly because of his own gift of deduction. That strong, independent woman was just to influenced by his appearance (and his voice, apparently) that she shied away from showing her true colors.

She first showed that strong character of hers when she gathered up the courage to ask him out. Three times. Once it was month after they were first introduced, once after she decided not to just give up half a year later and once when he was tempted to say yes. He sighed then, looking up from his notes and those big doe eyes of hers were so full of hope for something he knew he just couldn't give to her back then. So he simply asked her to bring him coffee upstairs – black, two sugars. He didn't even drink it like that back then. It was her preference, he deduced it in the first few minutes of their meeting. And since the day she made him that cup of coffee, he realized he liked it even more than the one that was not sugared.

Oh, but it was so easy back then. He could just waltz in, ask her a favor and if she was not in the mood to be simply charmed by his fake smile, he complimented her hair, her clothes and sometimes her make up.

Then the unfortunate deductions happened. When he declared her boyfriend, who turned out to be Moriarty, gay, it was the first time he regretted opening his big mouth. And he really didn't mean to unleash his fury over the Irene Adler case on the fragile form that was Molly Hooper. It was only when he saw the tears in her eyes that he first understood the phrase "it hurts to watch". Of course he said a lot of things along the lines with it when criticizing the simple minds of people surrounding him, but the tightening pain in his chest was certainly new to him. He knew he had to make it better. And he did.

Oh, how he thought that tightening pain will never be felt again since that party! But then there it was, only a few months later, when she told him she didn't count. He still swears to this day that as soon as those words left her mouth, it was the first time in his life that he became completely and utterly speechless. Not because of what she thought of herself, but because it wasn't until that very moment that ihe/i realized she was more important to him than he let her (and everyone else) to believe. That he trusted her. That she counted.

Her role in faking his death wasn't very important, Sherlock knew that – Mycroft even called it the last missing piece to a 1000 piece puzzle (Sherlock wouldn't talk to him for two weeks because of this comment). But he still felt proud when she found the body (in the record time of one hour), and was forever grateful that she risked her job to fake his records. And when they met at the end of the cemetery after his own funeral five days later, she hugged him goodbye. It was an awkward hug, mostly because of lack of experience on his part, but when she pulled away and said a final goodbye before walking away, she took a piece of him with her.

Then he spent two years tracking down Moriarty's web. He travelled, gathered up information about the people he needed to find and solved an occasional case if he felt like it. And on the nights, when he was on his own, he did only two things: thinking about how John was coping with his demise and wondering what did Molly take away from him when she hugged him. He felt at loss as she was walking away and he didn't know why.

Only when he surprised her in the locker room at St. Bart's and when she smiled at him in relief he found out what exactly she took – his heart.

And it was a simple plan he came up with after John wouldn't talk to him – ask her on a sufficient date (solving crimes, of course! She was smart enough to help him and it was something that would show his true self – that's what people do on dates, right? No, later he figured it was not quite like that), tell her how he feels and she'll be moving in with him in a matter of weeks. If it hadn't been for that damned ring, which tightened his chest even more at the sight of it, it would've all gone as planned.

"Unaware of the beautiful ..." What a lie. He's seen that woman be beautiful in two weddings already, absolutely glowing once in yellow and once in white. The yellow dress brought her cheeriness, even if her date was an idiotic ... meat-dagger, to put it nicely. And the white dress – well, he could only say that it was the second time he witnessed the most beautiful of sights. The first one was just a second after their first kiss, when a smile played on her lips and her eyes shone with love. He saw that face many times in the whole 48 years they spent together, but her arrival to the aisle, in a white dress and her lovely face, and the melody in the form of her soft voice when she said her wedding vows were a sight not easily forgotten. He still had a picture his mother took, right after the priest proclaimed her his. He kissed her then, with hands on her cheeks to wipe away a few tears of happiness that escaped her eyes. The picture was placed next to his skull, seen to every person who ever entered Baker Street.

It was the easiest thing on the world to fall in love with her timid and loving nature, and the hardest thing not to let his arousal cloud his mind when she went out of character with anger and fierce passion in her eyes. She was furious with him more times than he could count, but she physically hurt him only three times. Once after his relapse to drugs, when she slapped the hell out of him, once while giving birth to their daughter, when she had a death grip on his hand and shouted abuse, and he deserved one incredibly strong kick under the table at the Christmas dinner with his and her family, when he very explicitly described their sexual life to shut Mycroft up.

Their children, a boy and a girl, moved out of Baker Street all to quickly, following each others dreams (their daughter used her great mind to become a surgeon and her younger brother wanted to become a detective inspector ever since he met Lestrade and Anderson – not because they inspired him, but because he thought the Scotland Yard needed more competent people to work there), and she cried her eyes out when they left for good. It was a beginning of yet a new chapter in their lives – the one where they start to grow old together.

He did not change with age and nor did she. Not in character, and to him she did not change even in beauty. She was the one always pointing out her wrinkles and graying hair, but he never saw a single imperfection on her body and he never missed the chance to tell her she looked beautiful.

It wasn't until last year that things had changed.

Sherlock Holmes folded the newspaper he hadn't even been reading and looked at the empty chair in front of his. The red cushions, ornamented in golden patterns, didn't show a single trail of dust, although no one sat in the chair in a year. On the table beside it was an intriguing crime novel, that has been read once by him and countless times by her. There was a bookmark still marking a page somewhere near the end as it sat there in an unmoving position, next to a vanilla scented candle that used to drown the flat in a sickeningly sweet aroma which the secretly loved, but he could never bring himself to light it up, for he knew he would cry like a baby if he did.

His eyes looked around the living room and once again searched for everything that she put there. In the end they stopped at the chair again and he smiled.

It was a bloody nice life he spent with Molly Hooper.


End file.
